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The word sounded a tad odd, coming out of the Ottawa Senators dressing room only a few minutes after the end came with a thud, three minutes shy of midnight Thursday.

Yet that’s where Senators goaltender Craig Anderson went when asked about how he would remember the season that finished on the Chris Kunitz “knuckle puck”, one Senators shot shy of a berth in the Stanley Cup final.

“Love,” he said, his voice breaking slightly. “The love for the guys in here. Right from the day I left the team to the day I came back. I wouldn’t ask for better teammates than the guys this year.”

Anderson’s personal situation was a central theme — perhaps the central theme — in the year where a series of unfortunate events ended up pushing the Senators onwards and upwards.

He missed extended portions of the season to be with his wife, Nicholle, in her fight with a rare throat cancer, meaning back-up Mike Condon needed to carry the load through December and January.

Nicholle Anderson, too, weighed in on Twitter when it was done.

“A year you would think I would want to forget, but I couldn’t be prouder of our team,” she wrote. “Great year and memories that will last a lifetime.”

Anderson, who turned 36 on the night of Game 5 against Pittsburgh, fully recognizes that his days in the NHL are running out. Chances are he’ll never experience a run deep into the third round of the playoffs ever again.

For all the rough stuff that occurred during the regular season, the post-season was full of signature moments.

Twenty seconds after falling behind 1-0 in the second period Thursday, they tied the game. Three minutes after going behind 2-1 in third period, they evened the game again.

The Senators had already won six overtime games. They seemed destined to win a seventh — and go on to seventh heaven and a match-up against Nashville in the final.

“It’s just that I thought it was meant to be,” said Anderson. “I thought it was our time. You need a little bit of luck on your side. A lot of things need to go right. It just didn’t fall for us.”

The Penguins outplayed the Senators in overtime, but time and again, Anderson made the big save and/or the Penguins put pucks off posts and pads.

When the winner came, off a change of pace Kunitz shot following a superb set up by Sidney Crosby, Anderson didn’t see it coming. Jean-Gabriel Pageau was only inches away from blocking the shot, but the puck caught the top of the net.

“It was a knuckle puck, end over end,” said Anderson. “A perfect shot, a little bit lucky, too, because it was a knuckler. I don’t see it come off his stick. I’m just making myself as big as possible, hoping for the best. It didn’t work out.”

Then the disbelief set in.

“Shock, I think, at the moment,” Anderson said. “It doesn’t feel like it’s happening, but it is. We played our hearts out. We gave everything we had. We have nothing to be ashamed of. We laid it out there. Put it on the line. The guys were dead tired out there. It just wasn’t in the cards for us.”

Anderson himself had a few ups and downs in the playoffs, allowing four goals in the first period of the atrocious Game 5 in Pittsburgh.

Yet he followed that up by showcasing the mental toughness of an elite goaltender. Without Anderson, there’s no way the Senators would have won Game 6 at Canadian Tire Centre. Without him, the Senators had little chance of taking the Penguins to overtime in Game 7.

He was, simply put, superb with the season on the line.

Then he summed up the season with the appropriate words for his surprising squad.

“Disappointment,” he said. “We’re all disappointed. But there’s nothing to be ashamed of. We all should be proud of the way we played and battled.

“We weren’t supposed to be here. We weren’t supposed to do this. Inside this room, we believed we could achieve anything if we put our mind to it. With a little bit of puck luck, maybe we’re still standing.”

PAGEAU IN LINE FOR A RAISE

Jean-Gabriel Pageau was searching, desperately, for the proper way to express everything.

It took awhile.

“It’s too fresh,” he said trying to grasp the reality of watching the shot from Chris Kunitz float past him and over the shoulder of goaltender Craig Anderson.

“I feel, myself, lucky to be part of that team. We’ve gone through so much in the season, and in the playoffs, too. It’s just a great group of guys. I think that was our main strength this year, the character we had in this room.”

It will, of course, never be the same again. General manager Pierre Dorion faces some difficult off-season contract decisions and somebody will be lost to Las Vegas in the expansion draft.

Rest assured, though, that Pageau will be back, taking on perhaps an even bigger role.

As a free agent, Pageau is poised for a big payday. He’s the Swiss Army knife of centres: He has all the tools for any situation.

He matched up defensively against the best of Boston, the New York Rangers and the Penguins, shutting them down for the most part. He also showcased an offensive touch, leading the club with eight playoff goals, including the never-to-be-forgotten four goal game against the Rangers in the second round.

The moment after the devastating defeat wasn’t the time and place to talk about his next contract. Again, he was trying to put into perspective everything that happened — and didn’t happen.

“It’s hard to … we wanted to win together,” he said. “It’s your friends, your 24 buddies pushing in the same direction. The goalie is (standing) on his head, making the big saves. You come back in the room and … it didn’t go our way. We all won together. All season long, we went through a lot of emotion.”

Pageau had been the little engine that could on a Senators train that seemed like it would never stop. But the last station was in Pittsburgh in Game 7.

“It’s hard to believe,” he said. “I can still remember looking right and left and knowing we were going to do the job. I think we left it all out there. We can’t think about a play we could have done better. There are always mistakes in hockey and I’m proud of all the players in here. It’s hard to realize right now. I have no words to explain that, really. It sucks to be out there and see that puck in the net.”